Latest

35-foot-tall straw Dalek terrorizes British countryside

It’s the superior life form in the universe… and it’s made out of straw. Your move, clay Cybermen. Seriously, is this the coolest thing we’ve seen today or what? It’s the creation of an ice cream shop called Snugbury’s, which does giant straw sculptures every year. And apparently it could have been a giant Royal…

What Queen Elizabeth II’s Speech Would Have Been If WWIII Had Happened

The early 1980s was a time of serious dread for many people worried that the U.S. and the Soviet Union might start World War III. And it’s easy to understand why. One wrong move by either nuke-equipped country, and it was the end of civilization as we knew it. In fact, that’s nearly what happened…

Skype Premium subscribers will now get access to Skype Wi-Fi for free—The service allows you to connect to “more than one million hotspots worldwide” using only your Skype account. That means that for $5 a month, you’ll (almost) never have to sign up for a random service in random place just to get online. https://gizmodo.com/skype-wifi-gets-your-iphone-online-at-a-million-hotspot-5831779

Newly declassified docs reveal Queen’s secret 1983 nuclear war speech

During the early 1980s, as the Cold War heated up, British officials drafted a stirring speech for Queen Elizabeth in the event of imminent nuclear war. Here’s what she would have said to her loyal subjects on the eve of armageddon. No doubt, things started to look a bit rough back then. In 1983, Ronald…

Everything Right and Wrong With Apps in One Bizarre Haagen-Dazs Concerto

Haagan-Dazs should make its own app, you can just picture a coked-up branding executive typing into a sweat-soaked BlackBerry after wrestling a horse to the ground with his bare hands. And so they did, they built a Haagen-Dazs app that’s really a 3D augmented reality violin concerto. It’s wonderful and horrible, and it’s everything. Imagine…

All the Science Fiction and Fantasy Books You Can’t Miss in August!

Summer movie season is pretty much over — but books are just getting started. This month’s books include bracing space opera, poignant magical realism, dark subversive futures, epic fantasy. And most of all, lots and lots of mind-blowing action. Here are all the books you can’t afford to sleep on in August. Image: Jon Sullivan…

Curiosity Rover’s first year on Mars, distilled down to two minutes

Tuesday, August 6th will mark the one-year anniversary of Curiosity’s epic arrival on the surface of Mars. To celebrate, here now is a rover’s-eye-view of the Mars Science Laboratory’s first twelve months on the Red Planet – full of scooping, drilling, laser-ing and plenty of driving. https://gizmodo.com/liveblogging-curiositys-arrival-on-mars-5932015 https://gizmodo.com/this-is-hands-down-the-most-breathtaking-version-of-cur-5938006 Remember: Curiosity’s mission on Mars is scheduled…

Russian Olympics: Athletes and spectators to be jailed gay “crimes”

Russia, a fascist state that’s armed with enough nuclear weapons to easily kill everyone on Earth, is also a country that legally and officially hates homosexuals and anything that could be considered (by a bigot) to be pro-gay. At next year’s Winter Olympics, visitors and foreign athletes will be subject to the same outrageous anti-gay…

Lawn Darts Is Infinitely Better With Parachutes

Quirky, purveyors of kitchen gadgets for the lazy and other items of whimsy, has invented a new game for sale called StrataChute. What’s not to love about a new game for the park, especially when it has parachutes? The premise is insanely simple: players are given little balls with parachutes inside them. You aim them…

Motorola Is Selling Its Moto X Superphone With Dick Jokes (Updated)

The Moto X leaves a terrific first impression. It’s well-built, it’s fast, it comes in a variety of trims. On the one hand, it exudes the kind of class that you’d expect from mature, seasoned companies like Google and Motorola. On the other hand, dick jokes. https://gizmodo.com/moto-x-hands-on-forget-specs-this-thing-is-awesome-991536492 Above is a section of the Moto X’s…

Bizarre study shows that advertising improves effectiveness of drugs

You’ve probably heard of the placebo effect, where people’s ailments improve when they believe they’ve been given medicine — even if that medicine is just a sugar pill. Now a new study suggests that the placebo effect can be invoked by advertisements, too. A group of University of Chicago scientists conducted an experiment to see…

Oh My, Look at All the Pretty Moto X Colors

The fabled Moto X has been detailed by Motorola at long last, and as expected, the company is flaunting the customizable appearance of the phone—there are more than 2000 possible color and material combinations you can assemble. Here are the 18 possibilities for the back, and they are oh so lovely how will anyone choose?…

VICTORY! Apple Has Fixed the Number 1 in iOS 7’s Calendar

Rejoice, humans of the Earth, for the ugly off-center 1 in Apple iOS 7’s Calendar app icon has been at last, FIXED! It took almost two entire years of design rants after every update, but someone in Cupertino has at last listened and corrected what was a horrible design decision made by someone else who…

Scientists Replicate a San Andreas Fault Quake in Upstate New York

You’d think that in this day in age of digital software, scientists wouldn’t need to destroy a real building to test the strength of its materials. But that’s exactly what’s happening this summer in Buffalo, where a team of Johns Hopkins engineers are using a hydraulic “shake table” to recreate the 1994 Northridge earthquake in…

Good News! The Moto X Will Have a Stock Android Google Play Version

The Moto X is actually pretty awesome all on its own. But super nerds can be happy it’s also going to come in a baby-fresh stock-Android-having Google Play version, with zero bloatware, and available directly from Google. It’s a trend we continue to be real happy about. https://gizmodo.com/moto-x-hands-on-forget-specs-this-thing-is-awesome-991536492 The Galaxy S4 and HTC One are…

How the Moto X Compares to the Competition

After essentially leaking every spec possibly imaginable, the fruit of Motorola’s Google-ized loins is finally here. And just as promised, it’s a colorful, smooth beauty to behold. Which is great, but the real test comes with what it’s packing under the hood. Can the Moto X keep up with the smartphone market’s toughest competitors? https://gizmodo.com/moto-x-hands-on-forget-specs-this-thing-is-awesome-991536492…

Hangovers make you more than sick — they also make you stupid and slow

If the nausea and dry mouth induced by a raging hangover isn’t bad enough, a new study shows that it also impairs your brain function and reaction times. Scientists who study hangovers usually focus on the physiological symptoms. But the new analysis, which is to be presented later today at Keele University (August 1), considered…

Dealzmodo: Apple TV, Samsung Monitor, Samsung Chromebook, Amazon Prime

Today you can grab a refurb. Apple TV direct from the source for 75 bucks. That’s 25% off retail on an item that rarely goes on sale, and it comes with the same warranty included in a new box. [Apple] Free Trials of Amazon Prime and Hulu Plus As you probably know, we’re bullish about…

Sol Republic’s New Bluetooth Speaker Is a Portable Party Machine

Motorola is teaming up with fashion-forward headphone purveyor Sol Republic on a co-branded Bluetooth speaker. The Deck is weird looking little thing, but it’s got a few features that make it stand out from the otherwise saturated cheap wireless speaker market. Unlike most $200 Bluetooth speakers, this isn’t a little box with front-facing drivers. Instead,…

Moto X Hands On: Forget Specs, This Thing Is Awesome

It’s been no secret whatsoever that the Moto X was coming, but now it’s finally here. It’s the first cross-carrier hero phone out of Motorola since it was taken under Google’s wing. We just spent a little while loving it up, and here are our first impressions. Design One could argue that Motorola has not…